It's still been in the pipeline for a few months, and I believe Seagate is the only other manufacturer that makes 4TB drives. Limited competition benefits new market entrants.
I admit I don't understand the headline. I bought a Seagate 4TB 7200 drive a month ago from OWC. It cost $400 then, but it see it's now listed for $349. Shouldn't the headline read that it's Hitachi's first 4Tb drive instead?
Actually, the headline should be written to say Hitachi ships the first INTERNAL 4TB hard drive." I believe your Seagate 4TB drive is an external drive. Both Seagate and Hitachi have been selling external drives of that capacity but Hitachi is the first to sell an internal version in this size.
"The drive is priced at 26,800 Yen, which translates to $345. For comparison, the 2TB Deskstar 5K costs 19,780 Yen ($254), so the price per GB is very close."
Either you meant the 3TB version was $254, or the price per GB isn't close at all....2x2TB drives would be $508 as opposed to 345.
I'm guessing you meant 3TB, but its a figure that could be misleading :)
You really should make a living as a gambler in Vegas and buy every lotto ticket you can. The yearly failure rate on those things was what, 50%? So after 10 years of use, you have the one drive in 1024.
Though, I probably jinxed it and the drive will die by the time you get to the ending punctuation mark in this sentence.
No, he's probably just not letting the drive idle. The problem was some new stuff sticking to the read/write heads if they were not moved for too long. It was fixed by a firmware update, but at that point it was far too late.
Jarred, you may need to change it back to the original text of five platters. VR Zone has a pic of the drive and it seems to show five read/write heads:
Five platters or not, hitachi has delivered the most solid drives in terms of realiabilty the later years, despite being the only(?) ones having five-platter drives for desktop. They are the top choice for hassle-free RAID.
Everyone's entitled to his/her prejudice. Just make sure you're clear about the fact that the problem with the old drives has absolutely nothing to do with the current drives.
I think they actually meant the first internal HDD (and by that I mean first commercially sold internal HDD, as obviously you could have taken the HDD out of a external enclosure and made it an internal HDD)
Seagate's website doesn't have a word about a 4TB drive. Some vendors may take the externals apart and sell the drive as internal, but that is not an official drive. Or the situation is the same as in this case, it's on sale even though an official announcement has not been made.
The same was said when 80GB drives transitioned to 160GB, then to 500GB then to 1TB then 2TB then 3TB. This exact concern of putting "too much data on such a large drive is too risky" comes up all the time. The thing is though, it makes no difference how large a drive is in terms of its failure rate. You can have a 7200.11 series that were garbage OR excellent Samsung F3/F4 series. It more depends on what internal components are in the specific drive.
But all that aside, you should be backing up your data anyway. In that case, if a 1TB or a 4TB drive fails, it wouldn't matter to you. If you have 1TB of data, you probably have a 1TB drive backing it up (at least). If you have 4TB of data (assuming you need a 4TB drive), well then you'd need a 4TB backup anyway.
The only way to ensure data is data redundancy. Even if you find a drive that's less likely to fail, would you risk not backing up your data?
You're right of course. I have an external drive and a large storage drive in both laptop and desktop for redundancy. I guess for my own use though, if i had a 4TB drive i would want something comparable for backup, and that is more than i want to spend on a drive. My next build will be my file server with RAID5.
You're right, which is whenever I by a new "storage" drive I ALWAYS buy three of them. One is the main drive in the home server which backs up nightly to a second drive in the system with the same capacity. Then every 3 months I plug in a 3rd drive and backup to that which I then store off-site at a relatives house (next store to me actually).
So yea, you should NEVER store any important data on just one drive without backups.
I'm still shell shocked by the IBM deathstar of early 2000's. No way I will ever buy anything that bears that name. If any of that technology filtered down, I will stay far far away. Rational, or not, I don't care.
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Cr0nJ0b - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I'm not sure where I read that they were divesting the HDD business...I think that WD is buying them...so why announce a new product now?dagamer34 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
It's still been in the pipeline for a few months, and I believe Seagate is the only other manufacturer that makes 4TB drives. Limited competition benefits new market entrants.melgross - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
I admit I don't understand the headline. I bought a Seagate 4TB 7200 drive a month ago from OWC. It cost $400 then, but it see it's now listed for $349. Shouldn't the headline read that it's Hitachi's first 4Tb drive instead?ddarko - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
Actually, the headline should be written to say Hitachi ships the first INTERNAL 4TB hard drive." I believe your Seagate 4TB drive is an external drive. Both Seagate and Hitachi have been selling external drives of that capacity but Hitachi is the first to sell an internal version in this size.melgross - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
I answered this already, but it's not here. This IS an internal drive. It's NOT from a case. The headline is wrong, and should be changed.tyciol - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I'm glad you two clarified this, I was a bit confused at first since seagate was throwing around the 'first' title.cfaalm - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
To up the price for Hitachi? To prove a point with their R&D department?I guess no one at Hitachi said: Stop developping, we'll be taken over shortly. Let's shut down our R&D for the time being.
Chapbass - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
"The drive is priced at 26,800 Yen, which translates to $345. For comparison, the 2TB Deskstar 5K costs 19,780 Yen ($254), so the price per GB is very close."Either you meant the 3TB version was $254, or the price per GB isn't close at all....2x2TB drives would be $508 as opposed to 345.
I'm guessing you meant 3TB, but its a figure that could be misleading :)
Chapbass - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Oh, hmm, I noticed the source is from google translate..maybe that has something to do with it? Not sure.Kristian Vättö - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
You are right, I meant the 3TB drive is $254. Fixed now :-)anactoraaron - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
"The drive is priced at 26,800 yen which translates to $345." And due to the hard drive shortage the drive will be priced today at $799.gevorg - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Five platters? FIVE? Will not touch.ChuckDriver - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I believe that is the same number of platters as the infamous Deskstar 75GXP.Slash3 - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
I am continually amazed at the fact that my ye olde 75GB 75GXP is still in use in a system and has never given me one problem.Gamblodar - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
You really should make a living as a gambler in Vegas and buy every lotto ticket you can. The yearly failure rate on those things was what, 50%? So after 10 years of use, you have the one drive in 1024.Though, I probably jinxed it and the drive will die by the time you get to the ending punctuation mark in this sentence.
MrSpadge - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
No, he's probably just not letting the drive idle. The problem was some new stuff sticking to the read/write heads if they were not moved for too long. It was fixed by a firmware update, but at that point it was far too late.MrS
Abix - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Yeeeeech. Pass on five platters.Zoomer - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Lots of top capacity drives uses 5 platters.JarredWalton - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Sorry, I screwed up and put five, but I believe it's four (1TB platters).JarredWalton - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Actually, I had "five platters, one more than the 4TB monster" when it should have been "four platters, one more than the 3TB monster" -- fixed now.ddarko - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
Jarred, you may need to change it back to the original text of five platters. VR Zone has a pic of the drive and it seems to show five read/write heads:http://vr-zone.com/articles/hitachi-makes-4tb-desk...
ATWindsor - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
Five platters or not, hitachi has delivered the most solid drives in terms of realiabilty the later years, despite being the only(?) ones having five-platter drives for desktop. They are the top choice for hassle-free RAID.Gamblodar - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
I'm still not sure some of us will ever trust them again after the 75GXPMrSpadge - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
Everyone's entitled to his/her prejudice. Just make sure you're clear about the fact that the problem with the old drives has absolutely nothing to do with the current drives.MrS
melgross - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
I agree, my Seagate uses 4.KeithP - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I am currently using a Seagate 4TB HD on my Mac Pro so how is this one the first???Did you mean Hitachi's first 4TB HD?
daneren2005 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I think they actually meant the first internal HDD (and by that I mean first commercially sold internal HDD, as obviously you could have taken the HDD out of a external enclosure and made it an internal HDD)melgross - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
No, that's wrong. The Seagate internal was bought by me a month ago.Kristian Vättö - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
Seagate's website doesn't have a word about a 4TB drive. Some vendors may take the externals apart and sell the drive as internal, but that is not an official drive. Or the situation is the same as in this case, it's on sale even though an official announcement has not been made.Tchamber - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I wonder how many of us actually feel safe using a drive that big. I myself wouldnt put that much data on one disk.RussianSensation - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
The same was said when 80GB drives transitioned to 160GB, then to 500GB then to 1TB then 2TB then 3TB. This exact concern of putting "too much data on such a large drive is too risky" comes up all the time. The thing is though, it makes no difference how large a drive is in terms of its failure rate. You can have a 7200.11 series that were garbage OR excellent Samsung F3/F4 series. It more depends on what internal components are in the specific drive.But all that aside, you should be backing up your data anyway. In that case, if a 1TB or a 4TB drive fails, it wouldn't matter to you. If you have 1TB of data, you probably have a 1TB drive backing it up (at least). If you have 4TB of data (assuming you need a 4TB drive), well then you'd need a 4TB backup anyway.
The only way to ensure data is data redundancy. Even if you find a drive that's less likely to fail, would you risk not backing up your data?
Tchamber - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
You're right of course. I have an external drive and a large storage drive in both laptop and desktop for redundancy. I guess for my own use though, if i had a 4TB drive i would want something comparable for backup, and that is more than i want to spend on a drive. My next build will be my file server with RAID5.p05esto - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
You're right, which is whenever I by a new "storage" drive I ALWAYS buy three of them. One is the main drive in the home server which backs up nightly to a second drive in the system with the same capacity. Then every 3 months I plug in a 3rd drive and backup to that which I then store off-site at a relatives house (next store to me actually).So yea, you should NEVER store any important data on just one drive without backups.
Choppedliver - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
I'm still shell shocked by the IBM deathstar of early 2000's. No way I will ever buy anything that bears that name. If any of that technology filtered down, I will stay far far away. Rational, or not, I don't care.